Lions still stuck in funk

LHS baseball drops fourth straight game

Another lengthy team meeting afterward meant another mind-boggling day of baseball for Lawrence High.

And, of course, another loss as the Lions fell, 16-9, to Olathe South on Tuesday at Ice Field, thanks -- in part -- to five Lawrence errors.

"Same story, different day," said a disappointed LHS coach Brad Stoll, whose 5-10 squad suffered its fourth straight setback in its fourth straight game with five miscues or more.

"Our mindset is just not good right now. We're not approaching the game the right way, mentally."

But early on, Stoll said he thought his team had cleaned the slate of the struggles that showered on the Lions last weekend during three losses at the River City Baseball Festival.

"We had a great pregame practice," said Stoll, whose squad will try again to stop its slump Thursday against Shawnee Mission South.

"The guys were really loose and looked very sharp for an hour beforehand. Then when the game started, I don't know, we reverted back and lost our confidence."

Big time.

Three LHS errors in the first two innings coupled with timely Falcons hits gave O-South an early 7-2 advantage.

But almost as frequently as the Lions have been booting the ball lately, Lawrence High's bats have been busy.

That continued in the third inning when Brian Heere -- who smacked a grand slam in 10-9 setback to Blue Springs, Mo., on Saturday -- slammed a solo shot to start the Lions four-run spurt.

LHS plated three more, two off a single by Will Falk.

"It's really sad that we're wasting all these runs," said LHS senior pitcher David Freeman of the Lions, who have scored nine runs in three of the four recent losses.

"Our defense is in a jumble, but we all know we're going to come out of it at some point soon. Right now, we all need to just have more trust in our teammates."

Catcher Brett Sims looked as if he might instill a little confidence when he lined a single to score both Marc Albers and Falk to cut the Lions deficit to 10-8 in the fifth.

"We're not going to quit, and we showed that," Sims said. "We just have to keep fighting through this until we can overcome it mentally."

But O-South, which added single runs in the third through sixth innings, made sure the Lions wouldn't comeback, tallying five runs to close things out in the seventh.

Stoll -- who again offered a stiff challenge to his players to take pride in both their mental and physical play, as well as their approach to the game of baseball in general -- said everyone involved in the LHS program will get back at it again during today's practice.

"I'm not going to give up," he said. "We're going to just keep fighting through this until we get it solved.

"We're a good baseball team that is just going through some really bad times right now. But I still believe we can play some of our best ball yet this season."